But it's also the Scouts' razor-sharp business acumen that has made the cookie sale as cherished and anticipated a winter tradition as the Super Bowl. The Cookie Program is far more than a fund-raiser; it's a highly successful business and economic-literacy program. Girl Scouts hone lifetime skills such as teamwork, goal setting, and money management; they also learn and practice many of the same strategies used by corporate executives in order to market and sell their cookies and to provide service to their customers.

"Americans love the Girl Scout cookie sale, but what they think of first is the product," says Kathy Cloninger, CEO of Girl Scouts of the USA. "They don't realize the sophisticated underpinnings of the business of running the sale. Every troop that runs the Girl Scout cookie sale literally runs a business enterprise."

THE EARLIEST MENTION of a cookie sale in the Girl Scouts' archives dates to 1917 - just five years after the organization was founded - when the Mistletoe Troop in Muskogee, Oklahoma, baked cookies and sold them in the high school cafeteria as a service project. Those girls wouldn't recognize today's cookie sale.

What was a simple snack back then must now take into consideration such contemporary concerns as free-trade chocolate, kosher certification, trans fat, union labor, and American-made ingredients and packaging - issues that are all addressed on the official Girl Scouts website (www.girlscouts.org).